Description:
This article examines Alfred Deakin’s attitudes towards, and impacts upon, Aboriginal people during the period 1880-1910, drawing on newspaper articles and parliamentary debates as principal source materials. The discussion begins by charting the long, influential and often positive relationships Deakin had with several Aboriginal communities during a period as a Victorian MLA between 1881 and 1884. It then proceeds to document Deakin’s extraordinary descent into paternalism and racially-based fatalism which pervaded his later association with Aboriginal affairs whilst Victoria’s Chief Secretary (1886–1890), Victorian MLA for Essendon and delegate to Federal conventions (1890-1900), as the Federation debates took shape. And finally, the article outlines the attitudes Deakin expressed towards Aboriginal people in his various post-Federation political roles, including Attorney-General, Prime Minister and Minister for External Affairs. In doing so, the discussion draws out the connections between Deakin’s advocacy of a white Australia and his attitudes towards Aboriginal Australia, and demonstrates the extent to which the creation of a new nation both informed and responded to socio-racial ideologies that mandated the exclusion of non-white identities from the nation-to-come

Description:
Forecasting supply and demand is fundamental to the sustainability of the water system. Demand for urban water seems on an ever-upward trajectory, with use increasing twice as quickly as population throughout the 20th century. However, data from Ballarat, a city in south-eastern Australia, show that despite this conventionally held wisdom, total water usage actually peaked over 30 years ago. While the 1997–2009 ‘Millennium Drought’ had some effect, the decline commenced many years before. Initially, this was due to a reduction in external domestic water use, which correlates well with an increase in water price. However, the effect was found to not be purely economic as the price was not volumetric-based. Internal water use seems more affected by technological advances and regulatory controls. Interestingly, there was no relationship found between rainfall and water demand. The role of price, water-reduction education programmes, water-efficient technology and regulation supports previous research that a multifaceted approach is required when developing demand-reduction policies and strategies. This finding emphasises the importance of understanding the component of consumptive behaviour being targeted, and ensuring that policies being implemented are appropriate for the desired behavioural change.

Description:
The links among theory, teaching practice, and evidence of student learning have increasingly gained traction in the public discourse in much of the Western world, as educational policy makers seek to bring together accountability demands with the push for improvements in student learning. This article draws on the notion of teaching and assessment as generations informed by diverse theoretical viewpoints. The article pursues three goals. First, it identifies distinct elements of social cognitive theory and the concept of triadic reciprocality in relation to the concepts of student agency and reciprocity between teachers and students’ in-classroom assessment as a learning process. Secondly, the article outlines the transformation of assessment practice over three generations of pedagogical theory. Thirdly, it argues that social cognitive theory offers a recalibrated understanding of assessment as a student-centred learning process.

Description:
Lake sediments constitute natural archives of past environmental changes. Historically, research has focused mainly on generating regional climate records, but records of human impacts caused by land use and exploitation of freshwater resources are now attracting scientific and management interests. Long-term environmental records are useful to establish ecosystem reference conditions, enabling comparisons with current environments and potentially allowing future trajectories to be more tightly constrained. Here we review the timing and onset of human disturbance in and around inland water ecosystems as revealed through sedimentary archives from around the world. Palaeolimnology provides access to a wealth of information reflecting early human activities and their corresponding aquatic ecological shifts. First human impacts on aquatic systems and their watersheds are highly variable in time and space. Landscape disturbance often constitutes the first anthropogenic signal in palaeolimnological records. While the effects of humans at the landscape level are relatively easily demonstrated, the earliest signals of humaninduced changes in the structure and functioning of aquatic ecosystems need very careful investigation using multiple proxies. Additional studies will improve our understanding of linkages between human settlements, their exploitation of land and water resources, and the downstream effects on continental waters.

Description:
Lake sediments constitute natural archives of past environmental changes. Historically, research has focused mainly on generating regional climate records, but records of human impacts caused by land use and exploitation of freshwater resources are now attracting scientific and management interests. Long-term environmental records are useful to establish ecosystem reference conditions, enabling comparisons with current environments and potentially allowing future trajectories to be more tightly constrained. Here we review the timing and onset of human disturbance in and around inland water ecosystems as revealed through sedimentary archives from around the world. Palaeolimnology provides access to a wealth of information reflecting early human activities and their corresponding aquatic ecological shifts. First human impacts on aquatic systems and their watersheds are highly variable in time and space. Landscape disturbance often constitutes the first anthropogenic signal in palaeolimnological records. While the effects of humans at the landscape level are relatively easily demonstrated, the earliest signals of humaninduced changes in the structure and functioning of aquatic ecosystems need very careful investigation using multiple proxies. Additional studies will improve our understanding of linkages between human settlements, their exploitation of land and water resources, and the downstream effects on continental waters.

Description:
The aim of the present paper was to review the opportunities currently available to health service planners to advance sustainable development in their future-facing roles within health service organisation. Critical challenges and enablers to facilitate health services planners in adopting a pro-environmental lens are discussed. What is known about the topic? Despite its harmful effect on the environment, health has been slower than other industries to embrace the sustainable development agenda. The attitudes and knowledge base of health service planners with regard to environmental sustainability has not been widely studied. For health service planners, embracing pro-environmental considerations in sustainable model of care development is a powerful opportunity to review care paradigms and prepare for the implementation of meaningful, improved health and system efficiency. What does this paper add? This paper advances the case for health service planners to embrace a pro-environmental stance and guides health service leaders in the preparation and implementation of sustainable and improved health and system efficiency. What are the implications for practitioners? Health service planers are in an ideal position to champion the sustainable development agenda as they explore what care is delivered, how care is delivered and where care is delivered. External policy, health service leadership and carbon literacy are advanced as critical contextual factors to facilitate the key role that health service planners can play in building sustainable healthcare organisations.

Description:
This study investigates the relationship between knowledge-sharing mechanisms, managerial tacit knowledge, and individual performance in the Malaysian public sector. Moderation effects of employee personality on these variables were also examined. Findings from 308 Malaysian public sector managers suggest that individual performance is influenced by levels of accumulated managerial tacit knowledge (LAMTK), which were moderated by employee personality traits. The findings also show that individual performance has an impact on the effectiveness of knowledge-sharing mechanisms.

Description:
The “electoral mandate” serves a useful function as a political weapon in competitive party democracies, notwithstanding the ambiguities, multi-layered complexities and uncertainty of many of the issues which the concept involves. The diverse uses of “mandate” indicate competing ideas in Australian politics about the responsibilities of parties to pursue commitments made during campaigns and the extent of rights to govern. This article portrays mandate not as a “theory” or “doctrine”, but as a rhetorical device that needs to be examined in the context of “contested word use” in political speech. The renewed interest in the study of rhetoric reflects the usefulness of examining multiple and layered meanings that exist under what ostensibly may appear as “empty rhetoric”, and to understand how rhetoric is used to persuade an audience of the validity of a particular action or viewpoint. While mandate often comes under attack as “meaningless”, it is a useful persuasive tool employed by politicians to consolidate their legitimacy and justify their rights to implement a political agenda and, as such, it contributes to public discourses relating to the nature of political representation.

Description:
The educational framework of Australian social work field education has remained static over the past few decades. Emerging challenges are creating a compelling case for change. These include increasing demand for placements, declining capacity of organisations to provide placement requirements, reduction in practitioners’ incentives and capacity to support student placements and to facilitate a work integrated learning context, and an interrelated web of policies and regulations that constrain adaptation to these changes. In a critical exploration of multiple levels of regulation and policy contexts, we argue that conventional approaches to social work field education are not sustainable given significant changes to the funding arrangements for universities and within the welfare service system. To futureproof integrative learning in social work, we advocate transformation of educational culture, policies, and design toward sustainability. IMPLICATIONS Supervised placements are designed to integrate practice and academic learning but their future use as the single means for achieving this integration will be unsustainable. Drawing on an ecological orientation enables social work educators to position sustainability as a key consideration and response to current constraints in higher education and the field. Focusing on sustainability across policy, practice, and regulation contexts has potential to generate transformative change that enhances our effectiveness in futureproofing the design of integrative learning in social work.

Description:
OBJECTIVE: Ecological models have been applied to investigate multiple domains influencing physical activity behaviour, including individual, social, organisational, community, environmental and policy factors. With regard to the built environment, research to date has been limited to small geographical areas and/or small samples of participants. This study examined the geographical association between provision of sport facilities and participation in sport across an entire Australian state, using objective total enumerations of both, for a group of sports, with adjustment for the effect of socioeconomic status (SES). METHODS: De-identified membership registration data were obtained from state sport governing bodies of four popular team sports. Associations between participation rate, facility provision rate and SES were investigated using correlation and regression methods. RESULTS: Participation rate was positively associated with provision of facilities, although this was complicated by SES and region effects. The non-metropolitan region generally had higher participation rates and better provision of facilities than the metropolitan region. CONCLUSIONS: Better provision of sports facilities is generally associated with increased sport participation, but SES and region are also contributing factors. Implications for public health: Community-level analysis of the population, sport participation and provision of facilities should be used to inform decisions of investments in sports facilities.

Description:
OBJECTIVE: Ecological models have been applied to investigate multiple domains influencing physical activity behaviour, including individual, social, organisational, community, environmental and policy factors. With regard to the built environment, research to date has been limited to small geographical areas and/or small samples of participants. This study examined the geographical association between provision of sport facilities and participation in sport across an entire Australian state, using objective total enumerations of both, for a group of sports, with adjustment for the effect of socioeconomic status (SES). METHODS: De-identified membership registration data were obtained from state sport governing bodies of four popular team sports. Associations between participation rate, facility provision rate and SES were investigated using correlation and regression methods. RESULTS: Participation rate was positively associated with provision of facilities, although this was complicated by SES and region effects. The non-metropolitan region generally had higher participation rates and better provision of facilities than the metropolitan region. CONCLUSIONS: Better provision of sports facilities is generally associated with increased sport participation, but SES and region are also contributing factors. Implications for public health: Community-level analysis of the population, sport participation and provision of facilities should be used to inform decisions of investments in sports facilities.

Description:
Case management has become the predominant model for attempting to improve outcomes for young adults experiencing both homelessness and unemployment. However, there is little evidence-based knowledge about how young adults respond to case management, and how much intervention is needed to be effective. This Australian study utilised quantitative government data to investigate the effects of the amount of case management on key outcomes. With a purposive sample of 224 people aged 18-35, this study compared four different amounts of YP4 case management service received over a three-year period. Participants were categorised into four groupings depending on the number of case management contacts they received: 0-5, 6-20, 21-40, and 41-156. The findings show some significant group variations over the course of the trial in the areas of employment and accommodation. Participants who received 20 or more contacts had significantly better accommodation and employment outcomes than those who received fewer contacts.

Description:
Nurses with effective communication skills play a critical role in minimising the stress associated with hospitalisation for both patients and their families. Effective communication has become increasingly reported as a key component in effective health care outcomes, which is even more crucial in countries such as Saudi Arabia with a large foreign healthcare workforce. The presence of a large expatriate workforce with a different language from the host society and the ensuing complexity of sociocultural linguistic and heath beliefs systems has been poorly researched. This study aimed to investigate barriers and facilitators of nurse-patient communication in Saudi Arabia using the Nurses’ Self-Administered Communication Survey. The survey was distributed to a random sample of 291 nurses working in medical and surgical departments at five hospitals in Saudi Arabia. The results indicate that the Philippine and Saudi Arabian nurses perceived greater barriers to communication with respect to personal/social characteristics, job specifications and environmental factors then nurses of other nationalities. In addition, nurses with shorter experience in Saudi Arabia perceived greater barriers to communication with respect to the clinical situation of patient and environmental factors than the nurses with longer experience. Lastly, nurses who had not attended specialist courses on communication skills acquisition perceived greater barriers to communication with respect to personal characteristics and job specifications than nurses who had attended such courses. This study highlights the need to better prepare expatriate nurses before they enter the workforce in Saudi Arabia on cultural competence and language skills.

Description:
Nurses with effective communication skills play a critical role in minimising the stress associated with hospitalisation for both patients and their families. Effective communication has become increasingly reported as a key component in effective health care outcomes, which is even more crucial in countries such as Saudi Arabia with a large foreign healthcare workforce. The presence of a large expatriate workforce with a different language from the host society and the ensuing complexity of sociocultural linguistic and heath beliefs systems has been poorly researched. This study aimed to investigate barriers and facilitators of nurse-patient communication in Saudi Arabia using the Nurses’ Self-Administered Communication Survey. The survey was distributed to a random sample of 291 nurses working in medical and surgical departments at five hospitals in Saudi Arabia. The results indicate that the Philippine and Saudi Arabian nurses perceived greater barriers to communication with respect to personal/social characteristics, job specifications and environmental factors then nurses of other nationalities. In addition, nurses with shorter experience in Saudi Arabia perceived greater barriers to communication with respect to the clinical situation of patient and environmental factors than the nurses with longer experience. Lastly, nurses who had not attended specialist courses on communication skills acquisition perceived greater barriers to communication with respect to personal characteristics and job specifications than nurses who had attended such courses. This study highlights the need to better prepare expatriate nurses before they enter the workforce in Saudi Arabia on cultural competence and language skills.